"The Poet in the World, the World in the Poet": Cyrus Cassells's and Elizabeth Alexander's Versions of Post-Soul Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

opening chronicle of Nelson George's Buppies, B-Boys, Baps, and Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture (1992) includes a small but notable stream of literary and academic figures such as Ishmael Reed, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Cornel West. Yet poetry--as written on page or as practiced by writers who identify themselves primarily as poets--is significantly absent (9-40). (1) Likewise, Mark Anthony Neal's Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and Post-Soul (2002), despite Neal's insistence on including and academics under post-soul umbrella (104) and an extended analysis of spoken word artist Paul Beatty's first novel (about a poet), provides no close reading of poetry as an important genre in post-soul era (131-74). absences of poetry and poetic analysis seem important because of crucial and prominent role of poetry during black arts movement, literary period preceding what Trey Ellis and Greg Tate have termed (in 1989 and 1992, respectively) the new black aesthetic (Ellis, The New Black Aesthetic 234-42) and a postnationalist black arts (206). Ellis's and Tate's versions of emerging period also fail to include or poetry. (2) If we agree with Cheryl Clarke on two points--that the African-American literary tradition begins with poetry and poets (12) and that poetry was a principal instrument of political education about new blackness during black arts movement (2)--then it matters a great deal that poetry studies, including a critical examination of poems, has gone missing from contemporary cultural landscape of post-soul era. One possible explanation for this supposed absence is that contemporary black poetry is often represented through spoken word and, by extension, hip hop, in which oral and performative elements of African American poetic tradition have come to fore. But such an explanation overlooks fact that there have been a number of black producing written, on page, poetry in 1980s, 1990s, and today. Additionally, in literary-academic circles, this period has witnessed establishment of George Moses Horton Society for Study of African American Poetry by Trudier Harris at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, founding of Cave Canem Poetry Workshop for African American Poets by Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, and two Furious Flower conferences organized by Joanne Gabbin. omission of poetry from George's chronicle, Neal's chapter on post-soul intelligentsia, and Ellis's and Tate's manifestos brings into question written poetry's and poets' relevance to post-soul black culture. If post-black arts movement poetry is flourishing, why are black not represented in early articulations of this period? Can their poetry be seen, like that of preceding black arts movement--as an instrument of political education about new blackness? And if we include them in post-soul aesthetic, how does that shift our understanding of defining themes of period? While I cannot provide in this space a full survey of many important and fine contemporary African American and wide range of their aesthetics, I will focus on Cyrus Cassells and Elizabeth Alexander as a pair of working in different ways with one dimension of post-soul aesthetics: cosmopolitanism. (3) Including them under umbrella of post-soul refuses, as post-soul culture itself does, a high versus low culture binary. Keeping black such as Cassells and Alexander within fold of post-soul aesthetics is an inclusive stance that considers cultural hybridity, as evidenced by university degrees, international travel, and professorial positions, an aspect of contemporary black life that is, as Trey Ellis would argue, just as black as any other. As George expresses it, one feature of contemporary period is tales told not from belly of beast, but from barely integrated mountain tops of academia, law, and mainstream journalism (108); therein is chronicled tight space where cultural mulattoes reside (107). …